Informers

Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit that accused the defense contractor of overcharging the U.S. Air Force for B-2 bomber instruction and repair manuals, federal prosecutors said Friday. In the latest allegations of overcharging on the $44-billion bomber program, a former employee accused Century City-based Northrop of violating the federal Truth in Negotiations Act by inflating cost estimates on the manuals.

PCM Inc., an El Segundo company that sells information technology products and services, has attracted little attention in more than a quarter-century of business. But that soon may change. The owner of a competing company has starting snapping up PCM's stock, raising speculation of a possible takeover. Firoz Lalji, chairman of technology company Zones Inc. in Auburn, Wash., now owns about 5% of PCM, according to a regulatory filing. And he called PCM "one of the poorest-performing companies in its industry.

Federal investigators are preparing to search a garbage-strewn hillside near downtown Tijuana for the graves of three people who an informant claims were buried there by former Los Angeles Police Department officers Rafael Perez and David Mack, law enforcement sources confirmed Tuesday. The search, expected to occur within days, is part of an ongoing federal investigation aimed at corroborating the allegations of 23-year-old Sonia Flores, Perez's former lover.

"Police! Open Up!" is regularly heard at the door of the Chameleon Club, the fictional cabaret in Francine Prose's new novel set in 1930s Paris. Unconventional verging on illicit, the club's revue features sexually ambiguous performers who dance before a predominantly lesbian clientele - in an era when laws existed prohibiting a woman from dressing as a man. And yet the club is tolerated by authorities and celebrated by the city's artists, intellectuals and...

Robert Levine knows all the stories. The gray-haired man talking with his wife over in the corner is a mob lawyer from the Midwest. The stout, mustachioed gentleman opposite him is a Mexican drug lord holding court with his extended family, complete with mournful wife, bored-looking daughter and solicitous son-in-law. Scattered about elsewhere in the linoleum-tiled waiting room on visiting day in the U.S.

A Rome high school is looking for a few good snitches. Using revenue from its candy and soda sales, Model High School plans to pay as much as $100 for information about thefts and drug or gun possession on campus. Under the new policy, a student would receive $10 for information about a theft on campus, $25 or $50 for information about drug possession, and $100 for information about gun possession or other serious felonies.

Chile's lower house of Congress voted 104 to 0 to approve a measure granting confidentiality to people who provide information on the whereabouts of those who disappeared during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. Police in Valparaiso removed from the Chamber of Deputies several human rights activists who protested the measure. The demonstrators said they feared that officials might be settling for letting the truth come out, rather than prosecuting the offenders.

The man who gave police the tip that led to arrests in the killings of nine people at a Buddhist temple has been indicted on murder and other charges, authorities said Friday. Michael Lawrence McGraw, 24, was indicted on nine counts of first-degree murder, nine counts of armed robbery and one count each of burglary and conspiracy, the Maricopa County attorney's office said. McGraw was one of four Tucson men named in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday. The suspects were arrested Sept.

Hundreds of people gathered at a village square in the West Bank to watch Palestinian militants hack to death an Arab man who admitted being an informer for Israel, Arab reporters said Friday. The body of the victim, Mohammed Khatatbeh, was left in the central square in the village of Beit Furik, and his family was not allowed to bury him in the town, the reporters said.

A City Council committee recommended Monday that an unidentified person be given a $50,000 reward for providing information leading to the March arrest of Kody DeJohn Scott, one of the LAPD's 10 most-wanted gang members. The full council has yet to act. The council offered the reward in February, and Scott, also known as "Monster," was arrested March 7 on suspicion of burglary, beating a man and stealing his car.

When a documentary interviewee says, "My dad has been collecting penises as long as I remember," you know you've entered some unusual film territory. Such is the case of "The Final Member," which revolves around the Icelandic Phallological Museum, an exhibit hall devoted to preserved male genitalia from a variety of mammalian species except one: human. And it's the quest for that holy grail of specimens that drives much - frankly too much - of co-directors Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math's decidedly quirky, at times unappetizing film.

TOKYO -- President Obama arrived here Wednesday to begin an eight-day tour of Asian allies designed to assure leaders that they have a strong U.S. backup at a time of rising tensions in the region. Obama went directly to his task after landing in Tokyo, heading straight into a private dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the narrow wooden counter of a popular sushi restaurant in the busy Ginza shopping district. The leaders agreed in advance to put off their formal welcome ceremony and royal reception until after they had met one-on-one in a friendly, more casual setting.

Orange County prosecutors have ended their quest to use recorded conversations between the suspect in the Seal Beach mass killing and a jailhouse informant, which they had hoped could put the man on death row. Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Howard Gundy told the court Tuesday he would concede a defense motion arguing that tapes of Scott Dekraai and informant Fernando Perez were obtained in violation of Dekraai's 6th Amendment rights. The recordings spurred a wide-ranging defense investigation into the use of jailhouse informants in Orange County.

A legal fight over the use of jailhouse informants has thrown the emotionally charged trial of the man accused of committing the deadliest shooting in Orange County history into jeopardy and will probably have repercussions in other high-profile cases. The battle has shifted the spotlight from the case against Seal Beach shooting suspect Scott Dekraai to prosecutors and informants, who have testified for weeks in hearings over allegations by the defense that jailhouse snitches were unconstitutionally deployed to gather information, and their work was then routinely concealed from defense attorneys.

BEIJING - On the first Sunday of March, China awoke to sickening news: Black-clad attackers with knives had hacked through crowds at the train station in the southern city of Kunming, killing 29 and injuring more than 140. Reporters leaped into action, gathering details from victims in their hospital beds. President Xi Jinping urged all-out efforts to investigate the slaughter. The incident was quickly dubbed "China's 9/11. " But by nightfall Monday, the state-run New China News Agency signaled that it was time to move on. "Kunming railway station serious violent terror case is successfully solved," its headline said.

A federal grand jury returned a sweeping 45-count criminal indictment against Mark Whitacre, a former vice president of Archer-Daniels-Midland and the chief informant in a major antitrust investigation of the giant agribusiness concern. Whitacre was charged with wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property, money laundering, forfeiture, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and filing false income tax returns.

A drug informant who tried to frame Gov. Guy Hunt's press secretary in a cocaine deal received a five-year prison sentence Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Harold Albritton also ordered Hilda Teague to pay $5,000 in restitution to press secretary Terry Abbott to cover the costs of hiring former Atty. Gen. Charlie Graddick to defend him.

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Mayor Eric Garcetti wants buildings across Los Angeles to be graded for their seismic safety as part of an ambitious plan to help residents understand the earthquake risks of their office buildings and apartments. Garcetti announced what would be the nation's first seismic safety grading system for buildings during his State of the City address Thursday, when he also for the first time said he supports some type of mandatory retrofitting of older buildings that have a risk of collapse in a major earthquake.